This kind of love does not 'conquer all'

After attending Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce’s wedding on Friday night, the CEO of AMC Theatres took to social media to report back. “In a world that is troubled, with war and conflict, problems and polarization, tonight was a night where one story shined brightly—that love conquers all,” wrote Adam Aron.

From outside the wedding, the “story that shined brightly” was that money and celebrity conquer all. This wedding at Madison Square Garden—estimated to cost 10 to 20 million dollars—shut down city streets, redirected commuters during a busy holiday weekend, and sapped energy during a heat wave in which residents were asked to conserve it.

Many an apt “let them eat cake” tweet was tweeted.

We know that wealth and the C-suite do not exactly confer self-awareness or good politics. Even still, it was a stunningly absurd remark. And on more levels than I could possibly name (gotta love the toothless abstraction of “problems” and the insidious both sides-ism of “polarization”).

I’m most fascinated by the way that his remark equates this spectacle of commerce, celebrity, and heteronormativity with love, as well as a benevolent kind of political power.

Any believable interpretation of “love conquering all” has nothing to do with marriage, which is often actively opposed to the notion of love conquering all, and to love being treated as anything but a scarce and hoarded resource. Love conquering all requires a transcendence of the self and the supremacy of romantic love! It means moving beyond the falling-into-your-own-reflection narcissism of “the one.”

This is to say nothing of that couple climbing to the top of the Empire State Building this week and getting engaged, all while flying a sign reading, “When the power of love beats the love of power the world knows peace.” But in the meantime… let’s make a grand spectacle of trad notions of love, I guess??? Makes me want to fly a sign reading: When love is equated with marriage it loses all power.

Anyway, to the link roundup!

We’ve got a Tarot reading for writers, “the billionaire’s vagina club,” some book (and poetry) recommendations, channeling my early-90s self, and more. If you’re a free subscriber, upgrade now to knock down the paywall.

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I’m on the Unladylike podcast chatting with Cristen Conger about my memoir My Mother’s Daughter: Finding Myself in My Family’s Fractured Past. She makes a comparison between my book and caro claire burke’s Yesteryear: “It almost sounds like a prequel to Yesteryear… except this is not fiction.” True enough! In interviews, I’ve been describing the home for unwed mothers where my mom was sent as a pregnant teenager as “tradwife finishing school.” It was that and so much worse. If you haven’t grabbed a copy yet, now would be a great time because you can get it for 20% off via Simon & Schuster.

Speaking of writing, I just finished Emily Rapp Black’s newly released I Would Die if I Were You: Notes on Art and Truth Telling. It’s a stunner of a craft book, one that reads like memoir. Her emphasis on fun, play, and intuition is a wonderful intervention for someone like myself. I am steeped in the conventions, rules, precision, and dogged deliver-now work ethic of online journalism, and I’m grateful for that. But also: The journalist side can be limiting. I need frequent escapes into the poetic, abstract, and squishy.